


how to save a galaxy in six easy steps

by errantia (ironyman)



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: 5+1 Things, Character Development, F/F, a little bit fluffy, who am i kidding it's a lot fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 12:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11691756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironyman/pseuds/errantia
Summary: five times Shepard defied Miranda's expectations(and one time she was entirely predictable)





	how to save a galaxy in six easy steps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).



> written for the 2017 spectre requisitions rarepair exchange for spookykingdomstarlight, who had a lot of GREAT prompts and ideas. i really really hope you enjoy!!

_(one)_

“Shit,” Wilson breathes.

Miranda doesn’t look at him, preoccupied with the armor. The subject’s leg is completely mangled, almost fused with the ceramic, and it’s taking all of her concentration to cut the armor off without losing valuable tissue.

“Lawson.”

She takes her time in replying, ignoring Wilson’s huff of annoyance. There – she levers a chunk of blackened material away and drops it with a clatter in the tray. She looks up: Wilson is holding the faceplate of the armor loose in one gloved hand. The subject’s face is bare, strands of ice-darkened hair clinging to her forehead.

Entirely intact.

She rises and walks to Wilson’s side; bends over to examine the subject’s face. The straight line of the nose; the sharp cheekbones; the slightly parted lips, blue from asphyxiation. The eyes, shockingly green, wide, glassy, staring.

“This should be an advertisement, right?” Wilson jokes breathlessly. “Sirta Foundation helmets – we’ll protect your head, even if the rest is dead!”

“It shouldn’t be intact,” Miranda says. “A fall from that height – even if the ship were in close orbit. Even layered, tempered glass should have shattered.”

“Come on, Lawson, it’s Commander Shepard,” Wilson mocks. “You should know better than to think that the laws of _physics_ would apply to her.”

Miranda can’t seem to tear her gaze from those eyes. Even in death, the woman is… compelling. She half expects her to blink, gasp a breath, roll off the gurney and come up guns blazing.

There’s a strand of hair tangled in her eyelashes. Miranda wants to brush it back off her cheek.

She shakes her head once, hard. “Get the rest of the helmet off,” she orders. “I want MRI of sagittal, coronal, and transverse slices. We need a detailed holographic rendering of her brain as soon as possible.”

It was pure luck that the glass stayed intact. Despite her fame, Commander Shepard was just a woman. It’s Miranda’s job to make her more than that.

 

_(two)_

Freedom’s Progress is a shitshow from start to finish. Shepard is nothing like her psych profile had made her out to be: she’s terse, aggressive, even reckless. She hardly says a word to Miranda or Jacob, answering their questions briefly in the shuttle and then radio silent in battle, and fights as if she’s alone. Even when they meet the quarians, she keeps her voice level and unemotional.

Miranda can’t see her face from where she stands at Shepard’s flank. Shepard had refused to wear a helmet, but at this angle Miranda can just see her jaw and the curve of her cheek. Her back is very straight, and Miranda watches the play of tendons in her temple and the brush of eyelashes on her cheek as she speaks to her old friend. It’s strange to see her in motion, and stranger still how little she moves. Even encased in armor, Shepard holds herself like she’s fragile.

She doesn’t fight like it, though. She’s just as good a fighter as the stories set her up to be, and for that much Miranda doesn’t question bringing her back. She flings herself at the ATLAS like a woman without fear, smashes the glass with the butt of her rifle as Jacob flings an Overload from cover and swears into the mic. It’s not until they’ve returned Veetor to the other quarians -- and that was a bad decision, they could have gotten so much more information from his testimony, but Miranda had said she would follow Shepard's orders -- that her façade cracks a tiny bit.

“Come with us, Tali,” says Shepard, soft all of a sudden. Not the whip-crack of a commander issuing orders, but a request from a friend. “I could use someone I trust at my back. It’d be like old times.”

“I can’t, Shepard,” says the quarian, not without regret. “I have responsibilities to the Flotilla. Got to take care of this lot.”

Shepard nods, and she doesn’t look surprised. “You’ve changed, Tali,” she says. Miranda is surprised to hear sorrow in her voice. Pride, too, but… “You’ve grown up. It really has been two years, hasn’t it?”

“Shepard,” says Tali’Zorah, “where have you been? We all thought you were dead.”

“I _was_ dead,” Shepard says, and her voice is hoarse. “I suffocated over Alchera. Cerberus brought me back to life.”

She’d refused a helmet. Miranda wonders what it feels like to suffocate.

A few more words, and the quarians turn to go. Tali pauses, though, and then steps into Shepard’s arms. Shepard hugs her friend for a long moment, holding her like she is something small and precious and fragile. Like maybe Shepard feels fragile, too.

On the way back to the Normandy, Shepard leans forward and asks Jacob about his time in the Alliance. Miranda listens, and thinks about blue lips and green eyes.

 

_(three)_

“That was stupid,” Miranda says flatly.

“Excuse me?”

Miranda looks up from her datapad to meet indignant green eyes. “Zorya,” she clarifies. “We needed Massani.”

“Fuck that,” says Shepard. “The man was a loose cannon.”

“He was a loose cannon with a network of contacts among the criminal world that we couldn’t afford to lose,” Miranda snaps. She’s standing – she doesn’t know when that happened. “You had one job, Shepard, and that was to kill Vido Santiago. Cerberus signed a contract with Massani, and you just voided it.”

“Does it matter that it’s void?” Shepard says, a challenge in her voice. “The man’s dead.”

“Exactly!”

“Lawson,” Shepard says. Miranda looks up. Shepard’s expression has softened a little, her eyebrows raised a little. Miranda’s lost her composure. Shepard’s concerned about her. Miranda breathes in, comes back to herself. She lets her mouth soften out of its scowl, schools it back into its normal faint, professional smile. She won’t let the Commander make her into one of her _projects_.

“This mission is important, Commander,” Miranda says. “Essential. We can’t afford slip-ups. We can’t afford to lose support.”

“That man was not essential,” Shepard says, and Miranda is startled by the renewed sharpness in her tone. “He was willing to let a dozen or more civilians die, Lawson. He acted against my orders - I take a little backtalk, you know that, but he actively endangered civilian lives and acted like it was justified by fulfilling his, his little fucking _revenge fantasy_.”

Her voice shakes a little on that last part. Miranda doesn’t stare at her.

“A dozen civilians,” she says, “against the trillions that could die if we don’t stop the Collectors.”

Shepard shakes her head. “That's not a real comparison. Even if he’d lived, I wouldn’t have trusted him at my back. He wasn’t the sort of man I’d want on my team." She leans forward, eyes glittering. "We aren’t going to win this war with numbers, Lawson. We’re going to win it with people. _Good_ people.”

Damn. She even sounds like she believes that. Miranda rests back on her desk and regards Shepard. “So, those speeches really do just come out of you, huh? You don’t think of them in advance? Keep them stored up for the right moment?”

Shepard blinks, and then laughs. “I guess so?” she says with a shrug. “Listen, I just talk and words come out of my mouth…”

“It wasn’t a smart decision, Shepard,” Miranda says, and goes back to her paperwork. “But maybe it was a good one.”

“All right,” says Shepard. “I can live with that. Thanks, Lawson.” She turns to go.

“Shepard?” Miranda calls, and she looks over her shoulder. “Call me Miranda.”

 

_(four)_

“Who’s that woman?” Oriana asks.

Miranda looks over her shoulder. Shepard is talking to Vakarian, her back pointedly turned away from their conversation. But as she watches, Shepard glances over her shoulder, almost as if she can’t help it.

Their eyes meet. A smile flashes across Shepard’s face.

Miranda looks away. “Commander Shepard,” she tells Oriana. No reason to hide the truth; not when Oriana would know in an instant if she was lying. “I’m working with her currently.”

(They don’t have the same tells, but they have so nearly the same face. Miranda’s never seen her sister in person before, but she can read each and every emotion in her eyes, clear as day. Shock, wariness, pride, curiosity. Wonder. Fascination. There’s no doubt that that goes both ways. Oriana would be able to read Miranda like a book.)

(And, well, Shepard’s face is all over the extranet. Oriana, like Miranda, has an eidetic memory; it would take her about five seconds to identify her if she tried.)

Oriana peers curiously around Miranda. “I heard she was dead.”

Shepard’s helmet is balanced on her cocked hip; her hair is loose, but tangled and sweaty, drying into cowlicks and flyaways. Miranda wants to smooth her hands over it. She tells herself it’s just curiosity; her own hair doesn’t frizz.

Oriana’s gaze has come back to rest on Miranda, and she cocks an eyebrow at whatever she sees on Miranda’s face. Miranda doesn’t blush.

“She helped me save you,” Miranda says. She smiles, looks down. “She told me to talk to you.”

“I like her already,” Oriana quips. “Isn’t that what the great Commander Shepard does? She saves people. She saves the world.”

“Not everything you hear is true,” Miranda says quietly.

“Oh, I know.” Oriana smiles, and Miranda loves her so fiercely. “So, how deep do you think I’d need to hack into Cerberus’ files to get all the dirt on you?”

It startles a laugh out of Miranda. “I’ll tell you anything,” she says. She’s telling the truth. “I’ll tell you everything.”

Shepard doesn’t say anything to her on the way back to the Normandy, but Miranda can feel the weight of her gaze. She’s smiling slightly, an odd little thing.

Miranda pulls up her omnitool and composes a message to Oriana.

 

_(five)_

“No,” says Shepard.

“What do you mean, no?” The Illusive Man is incandescent with rage.

“I mean that we don’t need this.”

“The Collectors’ technology --”

“We’ll fight without it. We’ll win without it.” Shepard turns away from the hologram and walks to the pedestal. “I won’t let fear compromise who I am.”

She unlatches her gauntlet, and begins to press buttons. The Illusive Man’s image ripples as he turns his attention to Miranda.

“Lawson,” he says, “do not let Shepard destroy this base!”

Miranda looks at the Illusive Man, looks him in the eye for the first time in a very long time. He stares at her, fury blazing from his odd eyes, and she realizes that in this moment, he is helpless. This man who hides behind his hologram, hides behind his self-important title -- this man who Miranda has hidden behind for years -- this man who sits in his chair with his cigarette and thinks to decide the fate of the galaxy. Miranda looks at the Illusive Man, and she looks at Shepard, who has a bruise on her cheekbone and armor covered in nicks and scorch marks and a horrible bird’s nest of hair and is looking right back at Miranda. And she knows her decision was made a long time ago.

“You know, I think I’m with Shepard on this one,” Miranda says lightly, like the world isn’t shuddering and crumbling around them. “No.”

“I gave you an order!” the Illusive Man roars.

“I noticed,” says Miranda. “Consider this my resignation.”

And without another word, she flicks off her omnitool. The Illusive Man’s words -- growing desperate as he finally realizes what’s happening -- are cut off mid-syllable. Miranda crosses the platform, starting to buck under her feet, and hands Shepard a charge.

Shepard is grinning wildly at her, and Miranda realizes that she knew. Shepard knew, long before Miranda, how this was all going to end. She knew, and she trusted Miranda.

Shepard sets the explosive, closes the terminal, and steps back, and the timer starts. Somehow, their hands find each other.

And then they save the galaxy. But you know that part already.

 

_(and one)_

The Normandy is alive with noise and motion. The rubble of the Collector base is far behind them, and they’ve docked at Omega for supplies and a short shore leave, but no one’s left the ship yet. From the sound of it, someone convinced Gardner to break out the good stuff, and the crew – reunited and safe – is making very good use of it.

“They’re happy to be alive,” says Shepard, and Miranda looks up. The commander is standing in the doorway of the XO’s quarters. There’s a light flush to her cheeks and a light in her eyes, and she’s holding two glasses of a terrifyingly purple liquid. Her hair is tousled.

Miranda wants to run her hands through it, to touch the line of her jaw, to press her mouth to her neck.

Shepard raises her eyebrows, and Miranda nods. She walks into the room and offers Miranda a glass. She takes it, but doesn’t drink.

“Aren’t you?” Shepard asks. Miranda has no idea what she’s talking about. She’s lost her train of thought.

“What?”

“Happy to be alive,” she clarifies.

Miranda considers Shepard, for a moment. The smile that’d been lurking around the corners of her mouth is gone.

She sets the glass on her desk lightly, straightens the pile of data-pads in front of her. “Cerberus isn’t going to just let me go,” she tells Shepard.

“What, really? Not just going to give you the severance package? Pension plan?”

Miranda rolls her eyes a little. “Somehow, I don’t think so.”

“Damn,” Shepard says. “They’re a worse company than I thought. Even the Alliance – say, do you think I have any back pay? Do they still pay you if you’re dead?”

“You’re going back to them, then?” Miranda says. Somehow, she’s not surprised. “They’re going to court-martial you for Bahak.”

“I know,” Shepard says. “I have to. The Illusive Man is going to spend a lot on trying to get you back, you know. He’ll even put eyes on Oriana, if he doesn’t already have them. You won’t be able to talk to her for a long time.”

“I know,” Miranda says. “I have to.”

Their eyes meet. They understand each other.

Shepard smiles, a little crookedly. “A toast, then?” she says, holding up her glass.

“To what?”

“To blowing up the Collector base,” she says with a shrug. “To life never being the same again.” Her gaze never leaves Miranda’s. She raises her eyebrows. “To being alive.”

Miranda stands, walks around her desk, and kisses her.

Shepard kisses back instantly, her hand curving around Miranda’s waist. Miranda’s hands are cupping her face, smoothing down her back, tangling finally in her hair. Her lips are cool from her drink, but the inside of her mouth is searingly hot.

It’s a long time (and far too short) before Miranda manages to pull away. She reaches behind her for her glass, and clinks it against Shepard’s, hanging forgotten from her fingertips.

“To being alive,” she says. Shepard kisses her again, like she can’t help it.

“You never cease to surprise me, Miranda,” she murmurs.

Miranda smiles against her lips. “I think I’ve got you figured out.”


End file.
